This is why, if you're going to do something this stupid, you do it in the middle of the car. That way you can bail when the thing lurches. They're not precisely stockcars, 30 feet ought to get you through. And even then, if youre not near the engines, you'll hear it long before the motion gets to you.

I see people doing that sometimes. Haven't been desperate enough to try it myself, but it DOES seem a lot safer than going under. It's not like trains have great acceleration, and it's a lot easier to jump off a slow-moving train without injury than to crawl between its wheels.

Trains have slack between the couplings. When a locomotive starts to move it does so very slowly at the front so to as to slowly take the slack out of the couplings. The slack is magnified as you move down the train such that the locomotive may be moving at +5mph while the last car is still sitting still.

So a train car can easily lurch forward from a stationary position due to this. It's called slack action. You don't notice it on a passenger train because it's so short, but it's very noticeable on a freight train. Usually you can hear the slack coming down the train as a "bam-bam-bam" sound that approaches faster and faster as it moves down the train.

Rapmaster2000:Random Anonymous Blackmail: How does a train start moving suddenly?

Trains have slack between the couplings. When a locomotive starts to move it does so very slowly at the front so to as to slowly take the slack out of the couplings. The slack is magnified as you move down the train such that the locomotive may be moving at +5mph while the last car is still sitting still.

So a train car can easily lurch forward from a stationary position due to this. It's called slack action. You don't notice it on a passenger train because it's so short, but it's very noticeable on a freight train. Usually you can hear the slack coming down the train as a "bam-bam-bam" sound that approaches faster and faster as it moves down the train.

I was next to a freight train that was parked in Kansas, one time on vacation. The train was being loaded, so it only had to move one car length every few minutes or so. The sound of the slack going out of a hundred couplings was like thunder.

Trains have slack between the couplings. When a locomotive starts to move it does so very slowly at the front so to as to slowly take the slack out of the couplings. The slack is magnified as you move down the train such that the locomotive may be moving at +5mph while the last car is still sitting still.

So a train car can easily lurch forward from a stationary position due to this. It's called slack action. You don't notice it on a passenger train because it's so short, but it's very noticeable on a freight train. Usually you can hear the slack coming down the train as a "bam-bam-bam" sound that approaches faster and faster as it moves down the train.

I was next to a freight train that was parked in Kansas, one time on vacation. The train was being loaded, so it only had to move one car length every few minutes or so. The sound of the slack going out of a hundred couplings was like thunder.

/csb

Thunder is a better description. Good call. I live about 300 yards from a train so I hear the sound quite a bit.

Standing out in the wind and the rainThat lonesome whistle is a sweet refrainWhen you're waiting for an old freight trainThat carries an empty carNever tire of the roadNever tire of the rolling wheelNever tire of the ways of the world

It's a little off topic but what I've never understood is why, in Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio and his love interest choose decapitation by train as their suicide method. Of all the things. Of all the ways. What a couple of melodramatic weirdos.

Rapmaster2000:Random Anonymous Blackmail: How does a train start moving suddenly?

Trains have slack between the couplings. When a locomotive starts to move it does so very slowly at the front so to as to slowly take the slack out of the couplings. The slack is magnified as you move down the train such that the locomotive may be moving at +5mph while the last car is still sitting still.

So a train car can easily lurch forward from a stationary position due to this. It's called slack action. You don't notice it on a passenger train because it's so short, but it's very noticeable on a freight train. Usually you can hear the slack coming down the train as a "bam-bam-bam" sound that approaches faster and faster as it moves down the train.

Oh yes....

Nothing like the sound of a 400+ axle Z dumping the air while doing 70 because some idiot starts going around a gate.

Four Horsemen of the Domestic Dispute:What was the big rush? Couldn't wait for the train to pass? Off to a job interview? Obviously this was just another in a string of bad choices this woman made with her life.

RTFA. The train WASN'T passing, it was stopped. They made a stupid assumption that it would stay stopped. So yes... probably another in a long string of bad decisions, but not as blindingly stupid as you make it out to be.